Miguel Rojas had three of the Dodgers’ 15 hits in Monday night’s win over the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field in Denver, driving in a pair of runs in the 12-3 victory.
The second of those hits was a single off Rockies starter José Quintana in the sixth inning, the 1,000th hit of his career.
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“Getting to 1,000 hits in my career is something that I marked on my calendar for this year,” Rojas told Kirsten Watson on the field on SportsNet LA after the game. “It’s a pretty cool personal accomplishment, but at the end of the day the most important part was winning this game with the boys banging at the plate and [Justin Wrobleski] throwing the ball really well.”
This year is a swan song for Rojas, in his 13th major league season. He plans to retire as a player at the end of 2026, and will transition into a role in the Dodgers front office.
“He’s been waiting for this one. He’s big on milestones and moments,” manager Dave Roberts told reporters at Coors Field, as shown on SportsNet LA. “He’s done a lot of good things in this game, so for him to get it was a huge thing for him.”
You’ll notice at the end of that clip that Roberts started to pretend that he was going to throw the ball from Rojas’s milestone hit into the stands. “I wanted to have a little fun with him, but I don’t think I had enough arm to throw it over the screen anyway,” Roberts said.
Rojas, now 37, is in a reserve role now, having started eight of the Dodgers’ 22 games. Five of those starts have come against left-handed pitching, against whom Rojas has nine hits in 17 at-bats with two doubles, a home run, and three walks.
Getting to 1,000 hits seemed like a long shot when Rojas signed a minor league deal with the Dodgers in November 2012, then at age 24 hit just .233/.303/.307 with a 74 wRC+ in Double-A Chattanooga. Defense was his calling card, and for that he received high praise. Manager Don Mattingly in 2014 compared Rojas’s glovework to Omar Vizquel, which fueled Rojas making it through nearly all of spring training camp as a non-roster invitee before getting cut.
The Dodgers called up Rojas that June, swapping spots with Erisbel Arruebarrena. On June 8, in his second major league game, Rojas singled in the sixth inning off Matt Belisle for his first major league hit. That hit scored Jamie Romak, who had just doubled for his first major league hit as well.
The timing was perfect, as only one more player batted in that game at Coors Field. The game was called by rain after six innings. Clayton Kershaw struck out nine in his five innings to earn the complete-game victory, two starts before his no-hitter, which Rojas famously helped preserve with an outstanding play from behind third base.
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It was defense that kept Rojas in the majors, first in Los Angeles and then eight years with the Marlins in Miami before returning to the Dodgers in 2023. But he’s going out with a relative bang, having hit .279/.333/.410 with a 109 wRC+ in a part-time role since the start of 2024, including .296/.361/.477 with a 134 wRC+ against lefties, the longest sustained run of offensive success of his career.
Rojas will be forever remembered in Los Angeles for his game-tying home run with one out in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 2025 World Series. His place in Dodgers history is cemented. But it was a nice touch that Rojas got his 1,000th hit in the same ballpark as his first, a nice bookend to a long major league career.
“It means a lot, because I received an opportunity 13 years ago by this organization,” Rojas said Monday night. “And remembering that this is a special ballpark, because that’s where I got my first hit. All it took was an opportunity.”
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